SPIRITUAL ALACRITY AND ENERGY
G. C. McKay
Genesis 18: 1–8; 24: 15–21; Habakkuk 2: 1–4; Galatians 5: 1–9
The thought in mind, dear brethren, in calling attention to these scriptures, was spiritual alacrity and energy, set out in the persons in them and in the way they move. The thought of running comes into all these scriptures. The thought of walking of course is one that is used in regard to our Christian conduct and pathway, referring to the character that would be seen in saints led by the Spirit and proceeding in the testimony. The thought of running involves more energy, the thought of spiritual energy and alacrity. I was thinking that sometimes in the presence of the greatest things, and we are in the presence of the greatest things, we can be rather slothful and lethargic. Certainly we know when spiritual things are presented to the flesh, the natural man, lethargy is in evidence, indeed no response. Sleep comes into Scripture at times to bring out that thought, that there is a weakness and slowness to move. It says in Ephesians, “Wake up, thou that steepest, and arise up from among the dead, and the Christ shall shine upon thee”, (Ephesians 5: 14).
So I thought of these scriptures as bringing out persons who were not lethargic; persons who responded to divine Persons, to what is presented in the truth. The references to Abraham in Genesis 18 are not the only ones that show his alacrity. We were speaking in the reading about a character of manhood that God looks for in our localities. The work of God in individuals has a character that shows itself; it has a stamp upon it that is unmistakable, and one of the signs of the work of God is that there is movement, spiritual movement and energy. It is a very wonderful thing when it comes to light in a person who is newly converted, but it is also something that is to be sustained through our Christian career. Abraham is marked by that.
He is marked by faith, being the father of those that believe, and we know that this character is to come out in us. That is, if the work of God has evinced itself in Abraham in God’s operations with him, there is something which has come to light that can be identified, and identified in believers of this dispensation too.
If Abraham runs to meet these men, these heavenly visitors, if he runs and hastens to meet them and serve them, there is a background with him of exercise and of committal. The obedience of faith that marked him is remarkable—the way that he went out without knowing where he was going, as it tells us in Hebrews, and the way that he persevered, and the way that he responded to divine appearings, so that he became enlarged in his soul as he was in movement in regard to these matters. If God was displaying wonderful things to him, both earthly things and heavenly things, then he was marked by spiritual progress, the building of altars and movement of soul. He was marked by remarkable obedience when God told him to circumcise his whole house. It says Abraham did it “on that same day”—“And Abraham took Ishmael his son, and all who were born in his house, and all who were bought with his money—every male among the people of Abraham’s house—and circumcised the flesh of their foreskin on that same day, as God had said to him”, Genesis 17: 23. Abraham’s answer to the divine instruction was immediate. That is a feature of the work of God. If it does not show itself in us it means there is something hindering obedience to the word of God. Think of the exercise as to circumcision being taken up so readily, the self-same day without hesitation, such a testing matter, the cutting off of the flesh. It would also, I think, have a counterpart with us in the reception of the Holy Spirit. We are not going to make any progress proceeding on natural lines. There will be no running, no walking indeed, no progress at all on the line of the flesh; but on the line of circumcision, and on the line of the reception of the Holy Spirit and making way for Him, then there will be the capacity in us to make spiritual progress. When the opportunity arises to serve God, then we will be marked by alacrity.
This is a very wonderful scripture in Genesis 18. Abraham having passed through so much exercise is in his house, at his tent-door, and he receives a divine visitation. Three men appear. It is clear that one of them is God Himself, because he remains later in the chapter standing before Jehovah. So he lifted up his eyes and when he saw them he ran to meet them from the tent-door and bowed himself to the earth. I wonder how good a runner you are, how quick you are. There are brethren who are marked by this and they are a great encouragement in a locality, persons who respond quickly, respond to ministry, respond to the truth. You can see their affections going out very quickly when Christ is presented. Persons are marked by alacrity in the service of God too, and I wonder if we might be exercised that that might mark each one of us, a readiness to serve.
Abraham runs to meet them from the tent-door. He is restful as sitting at his tent-door but alert. It is not that we are to be marked by fleshly agitation or feverishness. He is able to sit restfully at his tent-door, but when the moment comes, when there is a divine presentation, he is ready to move and he runs to meet them and to serve them too. It is a beautiful picture of a believer’s household really, because the facilities of his household are there, and there is refreshment available. So Abraham runs, and then we find him hastening into the tent and saying, “Knead quickly”, and then he “ran to the herd, and took a calf tender and good, and gave it to the attendant” to dress it. He was marked by alacrity.
I wondered if something of that character should not come out in us. If you look to the New Testament you
find persons who are described as sons of Abraham, and there is a daughter of Abraham too.
So that is a clear indication that the same kind of thing should be present in us. The scripture as to Zacchaeus who is a son of Abraham especially helps to show how it can come down to any one of us. You will remember that Zacchaeus was marked by something of these features. Even before he had come to know Jesus he was interested. It is good to speak about Zacchaeus because you could use him in the gospel to speak to anyone, to the youngest. Are you like Zacchaeus, interested in Jesus? Zacchaeus was interested to see Jesus, who He is, so he ran on ahead and climbed a tree to see Jesus. Perhaps he put himself in an awkward position up in a tree, but what lay behind it was an intense desire to see Jesus. The Lord spoke to him and said, “Zacchaeus, make haste and come down, for today I must remain in thy house”, Luke 19: 5. He hastened too and received the Lord, and the Lord Jesus says at the end, “Today salvation is come to this house, inasmuch as he also is a son of Abraham”, Luke 19: 9. Abraham’s features were marking him, faith, and interest and alacrity; and in what he says to the Lord about repaying anyone fourfold that he had defrauded, he was showing also that he was one of Abraham’s sons, in that he was marked by righteousness in his actions.
So there is a character of things that is to be seen in us, and it would be good I think for each of us just to take account of ourselves; not to be too introspective but the question would arise. Am I marked by these features? And if there is someone else in the locality who is marked by them, let us not just simply leave it to him and say he fills out that part of the locality, but let us imitate one another. That is one of the facilities we have, persons who to a greater or less extent can be an example to us. We can be imitators of one another in what is good.
Abraham is marked therefore by this alacrity. I wonder whether we fully take into account the glory and greatness of the privileges we have, that we have such a relationship, and such nearness to divine Persons. In the service of God, at the breaking of bread, there is such a matter as divine Persons presenting Themselves, the Lord Jesus presenting Himself to us. We might say that is a test. I might be marked by nature at that point; I might be sleeping you might say. On the other hand there may be some spiritual alacrity. Thank God that as marked by faith and as having the Holy Spirit, there is a capacity to see and to understand and to respond to divine Persons and to move with them.
I thought that Rebecca shows herself a little in this character, there is a family resemblance in Rebecca. It is not so much, I suppose, a question of faith and obedience with Rebecca, but in her character what seems to be set out is someone who is formed by the Holy Spirit, and who is responsive to the Holy Spirit. She appears wonderfully in the page of Scripture, a type of the assembly, and also of a believer. We find in her something of the same alacrity as she hastens and runs in response to the servant’s request. She hasted and let down her pitcher; you find her running again to the well—sustained activity in response to the Holy Spirit. Now we spoke in the reading about the prerogatives and the operations of the Holy Spirit, and that immediately raises the question with each one of us without exception, as to how we may respond to the promptings of the Holy Spirit in what He might indicate; whether it be initially as here that there might be a recognition in our souls of the Holy Spirit, or whether we might be prepared to go with Him, as the test arose for Rebecca. So there is an appeal in that. Are we going to be slothful, are we going indeed to be obstacles? There is always some kind of opposition. The most difficult to overcome, I think, is just the natural side of things, the flesh.
Outside opposition can be very frightening, but sometimes that brings out the best in us, and our mettle is proved; but the most insidious thing is what is natural that would just hinder us. So we find the Holy Spirit in type saying in this chapter, “Do not hinder me”
(Genesis 24: 56), and we find that Rebecca, who is marked by such alacrity, is prepared also for the journey to Isaac. She is not only prepared for the length of that journey, but is fresh at the end of the journey and able to leap from the camel.
These are well known scriptures, but I wondered if we might test ourselves a little by them. It is the character of things, you see. There is a kind of family resemblance; there is a household of faith; there is such a thing as the family of God. It comes down to that—children of God.
There is a character, unmistakable and clear, that emerges and rejoices the heart of divine Persons, and it rejoices and encourages the saints. Let each of us, therefore, be exercised a little more to display something of that, whether it be as in the exercises of Abraham in obedience of faith, in circumcision and reception of the Spirit, or like Rebecca, in response to the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit’s promptings do come in. You have felt them surely, within your heart, within your soul. It is easy to identify the promptings of the flesh—they are very insistent, very powerful—they have to be dealt with. But there are promptings of the Spirit; something moving in your soul and affections of which the Holy Spirit is the source. The thought in the gift of the Spirit is that, as the Lord Jesus says, “the water which I shall give him shall become in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life”, John 4: 14. It is not only the Spirit received, but the Spirit springing up in the person’s being, a fountain in him, so that the whole being is affected—“springing up into eternal life”.
I thought about Habakkuk because of the remarkable faith that marks him. He is also a person marked by alacrity; you find at the end of his prayer in chapter 3 that he speaks of how God made his feet as hind’s feet, how he was able to walk on high places, being able for exalted things. The first sections of this
short book give his exercises in the face of very severe difficulties. Faith overcomes difficulties, for the work of God will let nothing stand in its way. God allows difficulties to come in because He knows that His work in our souls will overcome them, and in that process we will learn the God who is our God. Habakkuk is able to speak in chapter 1 about his God. In verse 12 he says, “Art thou not from everlasting, Jehovah my God, my Holy One?
We shall not die”. He was facing a dreadful time in history, with the people of God in decline, and the impending overrunning judgment of the Chaldeans, and in the face of the devastation that was going to come in governmentally he has confidence in God. He stands watch on his tower, prepared to hear what God is going to say to him. He may not be in activity at this given moment, but note his alertness. Abraham sat at his tent-door and he saw the men coming; Habakkuk has taken up a stand upon his watch on his tower, and he is looking forth to see what God is going to say to him.
Now what God says to him contains the truth as to what is coming in, but it also contains encouragement in the face of the most serious difficulties. “And Jehovah answered me and said, Write the vision, and engrave it upon tablets, that he may run that readeth it”. What God was to give him was to be written very clearly. The thought is that you could read it while you were running, it was so clearly set out. So we might say, this is certainty for those that are running. He brings in certainty, “For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but it hasteth to the end”. In Hebrews 10 it says, “For yet a very little while he that comes will come, and will not delay “(Hebrews 10: 37). That is really the application to us. The Lord will come in a little while. He goes on,” but it hasteth to the end, and shall not lie”. There is certainty in the soul. It does say, “though it tarry, wait for it”, as if there might be a time of patience; but the overriding matter written on these tablets to encourage those that have taken up the path of faith and energy, is, that it will surely come, it will not delay.
Then Habakkuk brings in, in verse 4, a most important scripture. He is honoured in Scripture because only this verse in the whole of the Old Testament alludes to faith. It comes from his experience, it comes from a man who knows God. Christianity is like that; it is striking indeed the extent to which Scripture is that—what persons said, inspired by the Holy Spirit, but through their own experience and knowledge of God. It is experimental. It was not merely oracular in the sense that they had no knowledge of what it meant what they were saying. Persons spoke who knew God, and it says of the prophets, even if they spoke what they did not understand, they were exercised to find out what it meant.
So Habakkuk has the qualifications to speak about faith because he is marked by faith. He says, as to the enemy, I suppose, “Behold, his soul is puffed up, it is not upright within him”.
That is the dark side, the impression of the unjust, but “the just shall live by his faith”. So faith will sustain us. If faith wanes we give up the race, we give up energy, but the Scriptures are full of encouragement. It speaks about the encouragement of the Scriptures, and this is one of the encouraging scriptures that God has given us so that we should not faint. It says,
“they shall run, and not tire; they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40: 31), and the word is “the just shall live by his faith”. That makes it individual. Habakkuk is honoured that this scripture is put in his mouth, through his experience, and it becomes one of the most important elements in Christianity, a primary matter in God’s operations. God’s dispensation is in faith, and so this scripture is quoted three times in the New Testament. What a link we can have in that sense with Habakkuk! If he said, “the just shall live by his faith”, he was conscious that that was the way he was going to live, and therefore it must be so with us, that faith is individual. You can live by your own faith, not the faith of someone else. Paul says in Galatians, “I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me” (Galatians 2: 20). So that faith is to mark every aspect of the life of the believer.
In one of the epistles that takes up the Habakkuk scripture, Galatians, Paul says, “but that by law no one is justified with God is evident, because The just shall live on the principle of faith” (Galatians 3: 11). One of the great features that is developed in the epistle to the Galatians is the feature of faith, and with it other features, especially the feature of the Holy Spirit. Persons in Galatia had lapsed from the height of Christianity. How much they had lost!
They had resorted to law. They were seeking to be justified by law, therefore they were attempting to do something themselves; their justification and their life and their blessing was going to rest in some way on themselves, on the flesh. So at one stroke, those who were misleading them had cut away the great elements of Christianity, and taken them right back.
How striking that is, that one thrust of the enemy against the fundamentals can deprive the saints of the height of their calling, and of the whole elements of their Christianity. So we have the emphasis in Galatians that justification is not by law, but by grace, it is on the principle of faith, and the Holy Spirit has to be recognised.
The Galatians began well; they ran at the beginning, for it says, “Ye ran well”. So this scripture might be taken up for those who are running well; the thing is not to let anyone stop you. It was a person who stopped them, or persons—“who has stopped you ...?” Someone brought in a wrong idea, and it damaged their souls and damaged their pathway. We have to beware of any wrong idea, any wrong thought. There is tremendous value in seizing a right thought in Scripture, the truth; not only the text of the Scripture, but “what that is”. The Lord Jesus said, “go and learn what that is”, Matthew 9: 13. We need to work out the thing experimentally. Prove the matter, and let it be solid in your soul. We are to be formed in the truth, rather than
take on things superficially, and then drop them and resort to something else. As formed in what is right, and as what is right is inculcated into us, and becomes operative in us, then we will be preserved from any wrong thought or any wrong line that might come in. It will immediately appear alien on account of the truth that we have embraced and proved the value of. That is what Paul is saying to the Galatians—“Be as I am”, I have proved the truth, I have proved these things I am saying to you. Why should you not be like me? He says, “I also am as ye”. I am just a believer like you. Why should you not be in the power of things, and know the power of things as I have through grace proved in my soul?
So Paul speaks to those who have been stopped and brings in the great principles that will help us to continue to run and to respond to divine Persons. How powerful the language is!—
“For we, by the Spirit, on the principle of faith, await the hope of righteousness”. What foundation in the soul to have that! “By the Spirit”—having made full way for the Holy Spirit, and acting always on the principle of faith, we are awaiting the hope of righteousness.
We have Christ on high as our Object, and we know that He is our righteousness, and now we are awaiting the hope of righteousness. We shall be where Christ is, and we shall be shining as God’s righteousness in Him, and so we are moving by the Spirit on the principle of faith.
What surety, and what energy that will bring into the soul—“by the Spirit, on the principle of faith”.
Then the matter of circumcision of the law having been brought in, he says that it has no force, “neither circumcision has any force, nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love”. That last expression is remarkable. Faith is not only a gift which allows us to lay hold of the life that God presents, but it works, it operates, and it operates in this scripture through love. That is another element in the soul of the believer, that he is capable of apprehending divine love; indeed the Holy Spirit has shed divine love, God’s love abroad in his heart, and he has a nature that he did not have before as capable of love, capable of such a matter as that, as being a partaker of the divine nature. So faith can work through love.
Well, dear brethren, let us keep moving in alacrity and in energy. Let not anything or anybody stop us. Let these features of Christianity, seen in those in whom God has worked that we have spoken of this afternoon, be in us. Let them shine, let them show themselves.
Let us seek divine help that that might be so, so that we might be saved and remain here in testimony until the Lord Jesus comes—“He that comes will come, and will not delay”, Hebrews 10: 37.
Address at Richmond
8 October 1994